Ignoring the .gitignore file

Today I have a small disagreement with GIT and git ignore rules. When you add a
file to a GIT repository, it is tracked by GIT. Then adding it to .gitignore
won’t make GIT forget about that file.

In this post, I will explain how to stop GIT from tracking a file that is
already tracked.

You can use a cool command for this situation. Run the command below:

git rm --cached the_file_that_should_be_not_tracked.txt

If you modify the file again and run git status, you won’t see the file in the
GIT repository. The problem with this command is that this file won’t be a part
of the GIT repository anymore. This means it will be deleted on the remote when
you push the repository.

Sometimes you want to push a file to the remote and forget it. You don’t need to
edit it anymore. If you want GIT to assume the file is unchanged, You can use
the command below:

git update-index --assume-unchanged the_no_edit_file.txt

git update-index wants the file names on its command line, so if you need to
apply it to a directory you may use the command below.